vCloud Hybrid Service and the Recovery as a Service: Presented by Chris Colotti

As VMware's Recovery as a Service (RaaS) is a service based on vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS), you need to understand how resources can be purchased:

1) As a Dedicated Cloud (DC) resource which provides physically isolated reserved resources
2) As a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) which is software based and is defined by resource allocation. RaaS is offered as an extension of the VPC model.

Recovery as a Service will not be based on Site Recovery Manager. It will be based on vSphere Replication. If you recall vSphere Replication is done per VM, based on asynchronous replication and replicates at the VMDK level. RaaS vSphere Replication is not the same as the vSphere Replication shipped with vSphere as additional capabilities have been added. VMware plans to merge these at some point.

One of the differences between the vSphere Replication (VR) that is shipped with vSphere and VR for RaaS is that each VR supports 500 VMs and an additional encryption module is provided to secure transfers. To setup VR for RaaS a customer downloads the OVF, pairs the components with vCenter and configures each VM for RaaS. VMware has made it very simple for a customer to enable.

At GA Recovery as a Service will be available in all 5 global regions for vCHS according to VMware. In its initial release, this solution is not designed for the large enterprise. It is targeted at the SMB and Midsize Enterprise space.

RaaS is based on the Virtual Private Cloud consumption model; the minimum size required for the RaaS VPC is 20GB vRAM, 10 GHz of CPU and 1 TB of storage. 10 Mbps is required for network throughput along with 2 public IPs. It will be subscription based and is elastic so additional capacity can be added as required. In addition you get two failover tests per year, however the option to buy additional tests is available.

RaaS requires a dedicated VPC so an existing vCHS VPC that is currently running VMs cannot be used. VMware does not allow you to run the supporting infrastructure in the RaaS VPC as VMs are not powered on until a recovery is initiated. In order to provide the supporting infrastructure for the RaaS VPC (AD, DNS, etc.) you can add an additional VPC, use a current one not dedicated to RaaS or if you already reside in a datacenter delivering vCHS you have a "direct connect" option from your current infrastructure to your RaaS VPC space.

After a recovery has been initiated, to fail back you need to power off the VM in the RaaS VPC. You will then need to delete the original on premise VM in vSphere. The process then does a vCloud Connector Copy from vCHS back to the on premise vSphere. You then need to reconfigure the VM and power it on. Once it is powered up you can restart replication to the RaaS VPC. You have the option to use the reseed option after a recovery to select the powered off VM in vCHS to avoid the initial file transfer.










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